It is reasonable to assume that at the start of this month only Football Manager addicts, Wyscout watchers and hipsters with more than a passing interest in Club Brugge would have known much about Antonio Nusa.
But by the end of it, the 18-year-old has become one of the most talked about footballers in Europe with electrifying highlight reels, a transfer hijack involving two Premier League clubs and a failed medical providing flashes of excitement in an otherwise dreary January transfer window.
Nusa’s name began to populate gossip columns when he was strongly linked with a move to Tottenham Hotspur, before Brentford gazumped their local rivals by offering him a quicker route into their first-team. Perhaps assurances were given that he would be a pivotal player in a post-Ivan Toney rebuild in west London.
The Bees agreed to pay Club Brugge £25.6m up front for the Norway international with additional clauses potentially taking that figure up to £31.5m. It looked like a significant coup considering Europe’s biggest and wealthiest clubs have tracked Nusa’s progress ever since he broke through at Norwegian club Stabaek in 2021.
However, just when it was assumed that all was progressing as expected, reports emerged on Monday night detailing issues with Nusa’s medical, specifically regarding his knee.
Ola Sand, the doctor of the Norwegian national team, has moved to play down concerns over the issue, although acknowledged that he hasn’t seen Nusa since the October international break.
“Antonio is a young guy,” he said, via Belgian outlet HLN. “They occasionally have growth-related pain in the knees that then disappear. We have had no problems with it.”
From being the subject of a Premier League tug-of-war, Nusa now looks more likely to see out the campaign in Brugges with his long-term future now up in the air.
It would be a shame if this saga derailed a burgeoning career that has been on a rapid upward trajectory for a talented teenager who has generated plenty of excitement.
Gaute Nilsen oversees youth development at Stabaek and played an important role in Nusa’s development from the age of 14 until his departure to Club Brugge at 16 in 2021.
He recalls the time that a then 14-year-old Nusa caught the attention of one of Jose Mourinho’s Treble-winning titans at Inter Milan.
“We were in a tournament in Italy and playing against Inter and their coach Christian Chivu, who played as a left-back for Mourinho,” he tells i.
“We played a draw, a very good result for Stabaek, and after when the players were sitting in the dressing room there was a knock on the door. He came in and said that we played very well, especially the No 10 who was Antonio Nusa. Then he went to him and shook his hand and said ‘you had a really good game’. He could see his potential.”
Nilsen recommended Nusa to Stabaek’s first-team management not long after and unwittingly became his personal chauffer while Norway was under strict Covid restrictions, picking him up from his family home in east Oslo and driving a 40-minute journey to the training ground on the other side of the city every day.
“I thought it was just for two weeks!” Nilsen laughs. “When he was 15 I told the first-team coach Jan Jonsson that I had a player who had to train with the first-team. He said ‘ok we can give him two weeks to let him have some reference about what the level is’.
“He trained for two weeks and was doing so well and adapted to the level so easily that the first-team coach said ‘I want to him to stay in the first-team’.”
Nusa’s impact in senior football was immediate. He made his first-team debut as a substitute against Rosenborg in May 2021 just six weeks after his 16th birthday and after three cameo appearances he was trusted to start.
“He came on against Bodo/Glimt away [in his third match] and scored a fantastic goal,” Nilsen recalls. “And in the game after he started against Viking away and he scored two goals and had one assist. Then interest in him from many clubs exploded.”
Explosive is a fitting adjective to describe a teenage prodigy who quickens the pace of a game when he has the ball at his feet. In the era of the inside forward, Nusa is a precious commodity: a winger who can beat his full-back through both speed and skill, tearing past them by the touchline or dribbling around them on the inside. An unpredictable, potent mix of pace and poise.
Nilsen quickly realised that Stabaek had a potential superstar on their hands. He had the same feeling at his previous club Bryne when he came across a gangly kid called Erling Haaland. Nilsen was Bryne’s manager and gave Haaland his senior debut when he was only 15.
Player development is not linear and talented youngsters develop at different times, as England’s top two goalscorers prove. Wayne Rooney was an overnight sensation while Harry Kane was a late bloomer. Still, it is notable that Nilsen was more confident in Nusa’s potential than he was of Haaland given what the City striker has gone on to achieve.
“I’ve been a professional trainer for 30 years and trained a lot of talent but I have not seen as big a talent when he was 14 or 15 than Antonio,” he says.
“I told a Norwegian newspaper that before and they said to me ‘but you also trained Erling Haaland?’ and then he won the Treble with City! Erling has developed a lot but when they were both 14 or 15 years old I think Antonio was a bigger talent. But they have different roles on the field, Erling is a goalscorer, Antonio is more a dribbler.”
Similarly to Haaland, who has been an international teammate since August last year, Nusa’s career path has been carefully curated.
That he was willing to spurn interest from Spurs and Chelsea in order to join Brentford instead indicates that he was willing to take more incremental steps to the top, rather than going straight to the top of the ladder and risk sliding back down a giant snake.
“His father Alfie and his agent have chosen the right path for Erling all the time,” Nilsen says. “He went from Bryne in the second level to Molde which is a top team in Norway, then to Salzburg the best club in Austria but not the biggest football country and then he had offers from England and Spain but chose Dortmund, a big club but not one of the top five in Europe and then to City. So he has been building his career very well with the right level for his age and experience and I think Antonio is doing the same.
“It is important that the next club after Club Brugge has confidence in you as a player and play the football that you fit into and also that you get the experience of playing a lot. I know Antonio is very clever and also has his agent and people around him who are aware of everything.
“There are a lot of Danish players and a manager [at Brentford] and [Norway international] Kristoffer Ajer. I think it will be a nice place for him to go to.”
If as seems likely, Nusa’s move to England is denied, he will need warm words and sage advice now more than ever. Hopefully, in time this denial of dreams will prove to be little more than a speedbump on his route to the top of the mountain.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/7Q1RHVC
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